QUOTES: HERZOG’S NOSFERATU

martindupuis

3 years ago

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“As filmmakers coming of age in the early and mid-1960s, we were the first real post-war generation, young Germans with no one around who could give us points of reference. We were orphans who had no teachers and no masters to learn from and in whose footsteps we wanted to follow. The father generation had either sided with the barbaric Nazi culture or chased out of the country. A gap of thirty years opened up. As filmmakers you clearly cannot work without having some coherence with your own culture. Continuity is vital. So it was our grandfathers – Lang, Murnau, Pabst and others – who became our points of reference.

For me, Murnau’sNosferatu is the greatest of all German films, and feeling as strongly as I did that I needed to connect to this “legitimate” German culture in order to find my roots as a filmmaker, I chose to concentrate on Murnau’s masterpiece, knowing full well it would be impossible to better the original. When I finished Nosferatu I remember thinking, now I am connected, I have reached the other side of the river at last”.